A Silver Lining to Brazil’s Troubles

Of all the BRICS, Brazil would seem, on the face of it, to be in the worst shape.

BRICS, of course, stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a catchphrase that was meant to connect their rapidly growing economies. But that was then. Today, their economies are sluggish at best, and their prospects no longer seem so bright.

Everybody knows about China’s troubles: its falling stock market, its slowing economy and the amateurish attempts by the government to revive them, as if they should somehow snap to when the Communist Party gives an order.

Russia’s problems are also well known: In addition to the annexation of Crimea, and the ensuing Western sanctions, the Russian economy has slowed with the decline of the price of fossil fuels, its primary export. The South African economy is in such trouble that even its president, Jacob Zuma, described it as “sick.” Although India grew by 7 percent in the second quarter, that number was below expectations, and in any case, probably overstates the health of the economy, Shilan Shah of Capital Economics told BBC News.

And then, sigh, there’s Brazil. Inflation? It is closing in on 10 percent. Its currency? The real’s value has dropped nearly in half against the American dollar. Recession? It’s arrived. The consensus view is that the Brazilian economy will shrink by some 2 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, “between 100,000 and 120,000 people are losing their jobs every month,” says Lúcia Guimãraes, a well-known Brazilian journalist.

Compounding the economic problems, many a result simply of poor economic stewardship, a huge corruption scandal has swept up both Brazilian politicians and a number of prominent businesspeople. The scandal centers on the country’s biggest company, Petrobras, whose success had been an object of real pride during the go-go years.

Although the details are complicated, as its core the scandal is “an old-fashioned kickback scheme,” as The Times’s David Segal put it in a fine story last month — a kickback scheme that has been estimated at a staggering $2 billion.

Politicians and members of the business elite alike have been arrested. The country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, who was the chairwoman of Petrobras while much of the scheme was taking place, hasn’t been accused of anything, but her approval rating is in the single digits. People have taken to the streets to call for her impeachment, though there are really no grounds yet to impeach her.

Political corruption has long been a fact of life in Brazil, but rarely has it been on such vivid, and nauseating, display.

The double whammy of scandal and recession has created a mood that combines outrage, anguish and resignation. But there is something else, too. “People feel betrayed,” says Guimãraes. Rousseff’s party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) — or Workers’ Party — came to office in 2003 promising, idealistically, to create social programs that would help the poor join the middle class. Between 2003 and 2011, according to one estimate, some 40 million people have climbed from abject poverty to the lowest rung on the middle class.

“The worst thing,” a Brazilian friend of mine wrote in an email recently, “is this feeling of disappointment with the … PT, which brought so much hope to the middle class. I’d call this feeling a kind of political depression.”

And yet, as I look over the BRICS, I think there is more hope for Brazil than some of its fellow members. Admittedly, I am a lover of Brazil, and want to see it succeed, and so was pleased when, as I made phone calls and emails for this column, a surprising silver lining emerged.

It is this: For all the pain Brazilians are going through right now, its democracy and its judicial institutions are working.

“What I see, more than I’ve ever seen before, is that the country is weathering this storm,” says Cliff Korman, an American musician who has lived and taught in Brazil for decades. It has a free press, which has stayed relentlessly focused on the Petrobras scandal. It has prosecutors who are actually putting politicians and businessmen in prison, and bringing cases against companies. The judiciary is not backing down.

“Corruption is such a part of public life,” says Riordan Roett, the director of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “But now people are being held accountable. There is a sense that things could actually change.”

And unlike a half-century ago, when a military dictatorship overthrew a president whose left-wing programs it didn’t like — and held power for the next 21 years — there is no hint that such a thing could happen today. No matter how the economy goes, Brazilians are going to be able to choose their own leaders, and in so doing chart their own course.

“It is the beginning of a new Brazil,” Roett says optimistically. It couldn’t happen to a nicer country.